The Ultimate Caller ID

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The Ultimate Caller ID

Move over, GPS. British astronomer Peter Duffett-Smith has invented a technology that can pinpoint a digital cellular phone's location within a few hundred feet. The system, called Cursor, tracks a handset by radio triangulation - a method similar to the use of radio telescopes to chart distant galaxies.

Using a ping-and-reply system, a transmitter network relays the handset's location on the same 900-MHz phone frequencies. When the technology becomes commercially available in 1998, marketer Cambridge Positioning Systems envisions GPS-like uses such as regional mapping and enhanced 911 tracking.

Privacy advocates have another take on it. "This is likely to be used by law enforcement to trace signals," says Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Under current law, telcos don't reveal call locations. But the FBI is petitioning to change this. "In the old days," notes Rotenberg, "the phone didn't move."